The present invention relates to a deployable antenna reflector mounted on a spacecraft and, more particularly, to a deploying apparatus of an antenna reflector which can be folded to be very compact in size so as to enhance payload characteristics of a spacecraft, and which can be deployed to a desired size after the spacecraft is released from a launch vehicle.
In recent years, demand has arisen for an parabola antenna reflector having a large diameter and high reflection precision for use with a spacecraft. A spacecraft is carried into space by a launch vehicle. However, the available storage space for the spacecraft in such a launch vehicle is small, and a large acceleration force is applied to the spacecraft during launch. For this reason, when an antenna reflector having a large diameter is mounted on the spacecraft, the reflector must be folded into a compact size in order to realize a feasible spacecraft storage with respect to the launch vehicle, and the overall reflector must be appropriately supported to prevent structural damage.
For this reason, two types of conventional deployable antenna reflectors are proposed. The reflector of the first type has a deployable reflecting surface formed by, e.g., a mesh film having a much flexibility, and the reflector of the second type has a foldable rigid reflecting surface with high reflecting precision. The reflector of the first type is suitable for large dimensions, but cannot provide improved reflector precision. In addition, a frequency band is limited less than several GHz. The reflector of the second type is suitable for high frequency band use and is recently receiving a lot of attention. However, the reflector is a so-called center-feed type; the peripheral portion of reflector is divided into a petal shape, and the respective portions are folded toward a central portion into a cylindrical shape for storage. Therefore, the reflector of this type having a large diameter requires a large storage space. Furthermore, since the reflector of this type must be deployed in two operations, the respective reflector portions cannot be synchronously deployed, nor can all the reflector portions be driven by a single driving apparatus.